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THE DRUGS HURRICANE OF PUNJAB
by Appu Esthose Suresh |
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| Residents of Hindustan Basti are seen taking drugs |
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Young men in Angad, an impoverished settlement in the heart of Amrtisar city, do not take kindly to strangers. With reason, as, according to the police, every male member at Angad’s Hindustan Basti is a drug addict. A group of young men disperses as this correspondent walks by, and a little later, another group quietly asks, “Chahiye [Do you want some]?”
Drug addicts stand aimlessly around the Basti giving legitimacy to Punjab Finance Minister S. Manpreet Badal’s claim, “Punjab is in the grip of a drugs hurricane.” An affidavit filed by Harjit Singh, secretary with Punjab’s Department of Social Security, states that 16% of the population of Punjab is hooked to hard drugs. Although the only available survey that covers the entire State of Punjab was conducted in the year 2000, it talks volumes about the extent of drug abuse. According to this survey, 67% of rural households in Punjab have at least one drug addict in the family. Satish Chandra, Health Secretary to the Punjab Government, in a candid admission to Covert said that the figures could only be worse today.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime maintains that Punjab has emerged as the new hub of drug trafficking. The State accounts for one-fifth of the total heroin confiscated in the country. Statistics provided to Covert by highly placed sources in the State Intelligence Bureau of the Punjab police reveal that 573.93 kg of heroin has been confiscated since 2005.
The sources pointed out that Punjab is vulnerable to drug trafficking because of its proximity to the “Golden Crescent” comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. In recent years, they said, drug traffickers from across the border have started using Punjab as their main supply line for sending illegal narcotics to the West. The porous border with Pakistan makes smuggling easy, but increased surveillance makes it difficult for traffickers to smuggle large quantities of drugs to other States. So they dump a good portion of the drugs and narcotics in Punjab where these are easily available at cheaper rates than in other States.
FINANCE MINISTER Badal blames drug abuse to unemployment and farmer-prosperity. He said, “The Green Revolution has made every farmer in Punjab relatively rich. Our new generation is not interested in agriculture. They want jobs in industries. But we are not able to become an industrialised State yet. So the disgruntled youth with money in plenty get distracted by such social evils.”
Thirty-three-year-old Jagjot Singh has been undergoing treatment for drug abuse for the last three years. He is from a fairly prosperous family, and does not have to account for the money he spends. His parents used to live in the United States at one time. As a 15-year-old, he was curious and interested enough to try smack [heroin] for the first time at his friends’ insistence. It soon became an addiction. “Within three years I could not live without it. I dropped out of college,” says Jagjot. His parents stopped giving him financial support, so he became a driver. He started using drugs that could be injected. He remembers: “Every nerve in my body was going dry. I could not stand it and started acting like a mad person. It was scary and I decided finally to get rid of it somehow.”
Dr Rana Ranbir Singh, who runs the Drug Dependence Treatment Centre in Civil Hospital, Tarn Taran, told Covert, “We have been running this centre for the last one year. In the first six months, patients using oral synthetic drugs numbered more than those who used injectables, heroin or smack. Of late the latter’s numbers have doubled. As a professional, I find this problematic because in a drug dependent’s life cycle, heroin or injectables start after approximately three to five years of usage of soft drugs like alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and oral opiates. This is indirect evidence of how far Punjab has gone in terms of drug abuse.”
A major problem with the prevalence of injectable drug users is that it increases the number of HIV and Hepatitis C patients because of needle and syringe sharing. Surveillance data from National AIDS Control Organisation indicates that HIV infection among intravenous drug users cover 13% of Punjab’s population. Data from two Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres for HIV testing in Tarn Taran shows that compared to last year, there is a 30% increase in HIV positive cases this year, up to October 2009. Many of these drug users inject drugs into their system.
Tarn Taran that borders Pakistan is considered to be the most seriously affected rural district in Punjab. According to Punjab’s Health Department, 70% of Tarn Taran’s population is addicted to drugs. Among them, 70%-75% have reported substance abuse, and drug dependence is mainly among the age group of 15-25 years. This holds true for most of Punjab; nearly 60% of drug abusers are in this age group.
EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sumit Kumar is admitted at the Navjeevan Rehabilitation Centre in the adjoining district of Amritsar. Unlike Jagjot, he is from a poor family. Both his parents work as scavengers in Amritsar. Dr Arun Tandon, a psychiatrist by profession and a nodal officer for mental health with Punjab’s Health Department, told Covert, “The high rate of substance abuse, especially among the youth, is because of peer pressure.” Sumit has been taking smack from the age of 12 years, and resorted to petty thefts to support his addiction. When in Class VII, he made a desperate bid to steal money from his school to buy smack. He was caught and was expelled from school. It was only then that his family got to know of his addiction.
A study carried out by the Health Department says that “every third male and every female student has one or the other drug with them”. Approximately, seven out of ten college students have consumed drugs at some point or the other. An opinion survey that was part of the study revealed that 53% of males and 48% of females are prone to drug addiction.
Law graduate Baljinder Singh, 35, was a silver medallist in boxing at the national level. He was very conscious of the ill-effects of drug abuse. “There was not a single friend of mine in college who was not a drug addict. They made fun of me and they seemed to be happy all the time. They were not using heroin or smack. Instead, they used to have medicines. I thought it was harmless since these were medicines. I took a couple of Proxyvons for the first time. I liked the effect and I continued with it. Sometimes I would have as many as 15 tablets a day, and remain on a high for two or three days. Later on, I started using injections,” he says.
The trend of using synthetic or prescription drugs is particularly worrisome for the administration. A status report prepared by Punjab’s Ministry of Health describing this as a menace says, “The misuse of habit-forming drugs for the purpose of intoxication by the public at large and the youth in particular has achieved alarming heights in the State during the last two years.” Synthetic drugs like Brufen, Proxyvon, Combiflam, cough syrups, injections of morphine and other such drugs are easily available at chemist shops in urban and rural areas. These are not supposed to be sold without prescriptions from doctors, but it is common knowledge in Punjab, and all of India, that these can be bought over the counter. Health Ministry officials said, “According to a survey conducted among industrial workers from 200 large scale industries in Ludhiana, 25% of drug users are using morphine, sedatives and tranquillisers. 51% got their supplies from chemists.” Sources said official seizures of habit forming drugs are the tip of the iceberg, even though they totalled Rs 7.5 cr in the last three years.
According to a study conducted in 2007 by UNAIDS and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, intravenous drug use has increased and accounts for 16% of all substance abusers in the country. Pharmaceutical preparations are mixed with a variety of sedatives to make these sufficiently potent.
The abuse of synthetic drugs and pills is prevalent largely in Punjab’s Doaba region and partly in the Majha area. Doaba covers the districts of Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Nawan Shehar, Kapurthala and parts of Fazilka. The Majha region comprises the districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur.
THE PUNJAB Government does not deny the prevalence of drug abuse, or does not even try to play it down, but despite this not much headway has been made in checking the menace. Government estimates place 40 lakh persons as addicted to hard drugs, but the number is contested by drug counsellors and others working in the field. The latter feel that the actual numbers are much higher. But even if 40 lakh is accepted as the standard figure, the resources to treat that number are woefully inadequate. Punjab has just 33 counselling centres run by the Government and NGOs; 34 psychiatrists with the Health Department and only 145 beds for victims of drug abuse in the 11 Drug Dependence Treatment Centres run by the Government. Not a single psychiatrist is posted in Nawanshahr and Fatehgarh Sahib districts in the Malwa region. These two districts have the maximum number of opium and poppy-husk users. The Government has not carried out a fresh census on drug abuse since 2000. Sources within the Department of Health told Covert that they have only recently commissioned a study on the extent of drug abuse and expect the report to be submitted by March next year.
Private counselling and drug rehabilitation centres are mushrooming in the State. An official, on condition of anonymity, told Covert, “There is no stipulated treatment protocol that is binding on the private de-addiction centres. So anyone can open a centre and receive grants from the Government both at the Centre and the State.” He also pointed to the order passed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on May 2009 directing the State Government to inspect the existing Drug De-addiction and Rehabilitation Centres and file a status report to see whether they adhered to statutory obligation. No inspections were carried out.
DETAILS SHARED with Covert by highly placed sources within the State Intelligence Bureau of the Punjab police confirm the worst fears. Last year, consignments from Pakistan that were confiscated by the State Special Operation Cell established the link between drug trafficking and the Khalistan separatist movement. Dayal Singh, a close relative of Ranjit Singh Neeta, chief of Khalistan Zindabad Force, was caught with 6 kg of heroin. The sources said, “During interrogation, Dayal Singh confessed that the consignment was sent to him by Neeta.” Two other former Khalistan militants, Sukhdev Singh and Kuldeep Singh, alias Billa, were caught with 27 kg of heroine, two AK 56 guns, six magazines of ammunition and fake Indian currency worth Rs 20 lakhs. Sources added, “Our investigation and confessions from their interrogation reveal that the profit from these consignments was meant for former Khalistan militants. By the time we arrested Sukhdev and Kuldeep, they had already delivered 7 kg of heroin, three AK 56 and five pistols to their associates in the Ferozepur sector.” This shows, as the sources said, “Khalistan Zindabad Force, a banned terrorist outfit, is still maintaining its base in Punjab and is continuing its association with former militants. This is of serious concern to the stability of the region and can have far-reaching consequences. It could be that they are trying to make use of their links and knowledge of the terrain to become the most prominent drugs mafia in the region. Or they are consciously cultivating a drug culture in Punjab to provoke a crisis. An extreme possibility, however taken seriously, is that the profits will go into rebuilding the movement.”
Last year, Covert reported the revival of the Khalistan movement with the strategy shifting from the violence of the 1980s movement to a peaceful political movement, However, as an IB official said, “An overwhelming pro-Khalistan sentiment coupled with a generation high on drugs makes a deadly cocktail. And if injected into the bloodstream of sectarian feeling, it can create madness” [¼]
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